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<title>How to Talk: A Guide by Paul Munsky by Keekry</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23950075">How to Talk: A Guide by Paul Munsky</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keekry/pseuds/Keekry'>Keekry</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Half of It (2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Best Friends, Family Bonding, Family Feels, Feels, Fluff, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, I kneel at the feet of Alice Wu, Languages, Netflix original, Platonic Love, Platonic Relationships, Some Wholesome Stuff, cooking as a language, i just can't get over this movie and the platonic rep</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 01:29:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,137</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23950075</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keekry/pseuds/Keekry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Paul isn't good with words.</p>
<p>And even though words don’t always work for him, (they just… they just don’t go together sometimes. Logically, you say the words and the words mean what they mean. But sometimes people talk and they mean more than their words and it’s like he’s stuck doing addition while everyone else is doing multiplication.) there is more than one way to talk.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>217</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>How to Talk: A Guide by Paul Munsky</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hi!! So this is my first foray into the world of fanfic ever, so all I ask is that you be gentle! 'The Half of It' really had me feeling Emotions, and I was so so so happy with the platonic relationship representation in the movie. I especially loved Paul's interaction with Mr. Chu, so when I finished the movie with too much energy left to go to sleep this is what happened. </p>
<p>I hope you enjoy it!! (And please feel free to comment and scream with me about that masterpiece of a movie I am still not ok)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Paul isn’t good with words.</p>
<p>He isn’t good with words, but that’s just one thing! It’s just one thing he’s not great at, and he’s not gonna let it get him down. He’s got legs to run with and hands to catch a football with and the height to match, and sometimes his momma likes to tell him he’s got a thick skull, which must be a good thing.</p>
<p>And even though words don’t always work for him, (they just… they just don’t go together sometimes. Logically, you say the words and the words mean what they mean. But sometimes people talk and they mean more than their words and it’s like he’s stuck doing addition while everyone else is doing multiplication.) there is more than one way to talk. Paul grew up in a house where you had to shout to be heard, and he’s found that sometimes it’s better not to shout at all.</p>
<p>There are entire other languages in the way people smile, in the way they move, in the way they stare bemusedly at empty Yakult bottles as if their emptiness is the greatest mystery of the universe.</p>
<p>(No, Ellie, I didn’t steal your Yakult.</p>
<p>Yes, Ellie, you finished it all on your own.)</p>
<p>People talk without words all the time, and Paul? Paul likes to talk with his food.</p>
<p>Ellie is under the false impression that Paul only knows how to make sausage tacos, and while yes, he loves making them and they’re probably his best invention ever, he can cook other things too. He’s been in the kitchen since before he could read, and being in the kitchen was honestly what <em>taught</em> him how to read, because his momma had refused to let him cook anything until he tried to read the recipe for it. (Slowly, haltingly, and always stumbling but never being afraid of falling, because momma never laughed; only told him patiently what the word was after he’d tried it, and pointed to it on the counter so he would know.)</p>
<p>So he bakes bread by the dozen when he’s frustrated and angry at the world, lining up the kitchen counters with fresh, steaming buns and loaves until his siblings are lured in by the smell. They know what bread means, and they make sure to be as loud and obnoxious and loving as possible on Bread Days. His brother will challenge him to baguette fights and his sister will take a million photos and brag to her friends about his baking prowess, and they’ll be so loud and noisy that there’ll be no room for frustration in his head anymore, and he ends the day with a little smile on his face and a bun in his hand.</p>
<p>(When Ellie learns about the Bread Days, she too finds herself being loud to fill in his quiet; she reads her favourite books out loud and rambles into the air about all her theories and thoughts and pokes and prods him with her own newly acquired baguette until he’s forced to give her his opinion. She never makes him feel like he’s too dumb to understand. She knows he isn’t.)</p>
<p>He cooks a mean chili for the football team when they come over, and he’s always thankful his family is large when they do, because teenage boys can eat, and the pot never seems big enough to begin with. Before he was the only person to ever score a goal for the team, he was the Cook, with a capital letter C.</p>
<p>The diner he takes Aster to knows him by name and nickname, because he loves a good burger and milkshake, but he loves to know how to make them even more. The summer he turned 16 he worked there for a little extra cash, but also to get on the cook’s good side and learn what makes their milkshakes so thick and their burgers so juicy.</p>
<p>(See? I told you I could be romantic. This is how I’m gonna win Aster’s heart.</p>
<p>Homemade burgers and milkshakes are…ok, they’re kind of romantic. Just a little bit.)</p>
<p>So yeah. Paul can cook. More importantly, Paul can <em>talk</em>. And eloquently too, just not the way everybody else does.</p>
<p>When Ellie introduces him to her father, Mr. Chu greets Paul hello and claps him on the shoulder and that is all he says aloud to Paul the entire evening. (But he also eats Paul’s sausage tacos with great relish, and that is a paragraph of praise in Paul’s book.)</p>
<p>The second time Paul interacts with Mr. Chu, Ellie isn’t there to translate for him, but that’s fine. Mr. Chu shows him how to make dumplings, and they spend the afternoon together talking with spoons and rolling pins and knives. His dumplings come out wonky and a little sadly shaped, (though one looks like a dinosaur so he did something right) but Mr. Chu smiles and says something in Chinese so Paul smiles back and gives him a big hug.</p>
<p>(Even if you don’t speak the same language, hugs are usually good things. But Paul knows he and Mr. Chu do speak something of the same language here, so he knows that Mr. Chu knows that he meant to say <em>thank you</em>.)</p>
<p>This sets off a series of cooking days with Mr. Chu. Sometimes Ellie’s there, hovering in the background and grinning bemusedly at them, but sometimes she isn’t, and it’s just the two of them in the kitchen, speaking the language they both share.</p>
<p>Paul learns how to make buns stuffed with red bean paste and soup that is way too spicy for him. (Though he’ll never admit it in front of Ellie) He teaches Mr. Chu how to make sausage tacos, and Mr. Chu treats the entire process with a serious gaze and careful intent, which makes Paul’s chest kind of warm and happy. This is respect, he knows. Embodied not in a word that sometimes fails him but in an action that he will always know.</p>
<p>The Chinese style of cooking involves a lot of feeling by the heart and taste-testing and liberal amounts of soy sauce. It’s not what he’s used to, and sometimes Mr. Chu will interlude with a long and maybe kind of agitated paragraph in Mandarin that he listens to the tone and waving fingers of carefully, before slowly retracing his steps.</p>
<p>He’s so used to these sudden switches to Chinese, that when the day comes for Mr. Chu to ask him about he and Ellie, he doesn’t question it or ask that he speak in English. He knows that would be besides the point, when there is a message there if he is only willing to listen.</p>
<p>And he is. Because Paul knows, better than anyone, that we speak with more than our words.</p>
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